Just another day in the sun

My Head Hurts

After doing some light reading the other day on anxiety disorders (and by light, I don’t mean reading “100 Anxiety Disorder Jokes for People with OCD: we would have made it 101 but we didn’t want to fuck with you”, I mean that I only read the first three pages) I discovered that over 15 million people in America suffer from anxiety each year (it would be interesting to know a more localised statistic, but given we are a mere backwater cousin country, and the ‘brain drain’ has already meant anyone capable of producing such research has already relocated to the seat of the empire, these foreign statistics will have to do)

The causes for these phenomenally high rates are, apparently, plain old genetics, and growing up in families like this. But of course, living in a world that is batshit crazy, is also thought to have something to do with it.

For my own part, while I don’t discount the powerful influence of a certifiable family of origin and misfiring genetic codes that produce involuntary twitches, I find myself deeply interested in how modern day madness attributes to our rather poor state of internal affairs.

I was hoping to share some stand out examples of these crazy circumstances here, things like how many times we have been forced to listen to the worlds worst advertising jingle while sitting in traffic for 540 hours a year and driving to work where we spend 80,000 hours of our life contributing to a system inherently hell bent on destroying our natural environment all the while producing enough waste that there is now a rubbish tip the size of the Northern Territory milling about in the Pacific Ocean.

But it all made me, well, rather fucking anxious, and only really served in giving great credence to the not altogether accurate, but seemingly fitting analogy of great hordes of lemmings charging off a cliff, mindlessly plummeting to their doom.

And because I kicked off my half baked investigations by looking at the number of marketing messages we are exposed to – about 3,000 a day – I just couldn’t seem to get past the, not entirely related but still fucked up and fascinating, world of corporate advertising.

There is no telling what relationship, if any, this has to anxiety levels, because, to date, the psychological impacts of corporate advertising remain largely unexplored. But there is no denying the steady rate of ‘ad creep’ into more and more aspects of our lives. And if sitting on a bus, your view out the window slightly obstructed by the ad that has been painted over it, taking an automated call from your mobile provider *informing* you of nifty new services on offer, then biting into an apple only to find you have a taken a mouthful of a carefully placed stick on slogan isn’t enough to alarm you of the ever encroaching ad army, then check out some of these more *inventive* ways of grabbing our attention.
* In 1993 Space Marketing Inc proposed launching a ‘Space Billboard’ into low orbit to be visible on earth. The 1km squared illuminated billboard was designed to look like a full moon with the idea that every dawn and dusk huge “Pepsi” or “Toyota” messages could beam down on us, and instead of old folk lore about the boy in the moon, a new day would come where we lull our children to sleep with the ‘oh what a feeling’ Toyota jingle. Sadly, the impact from unwieldy pieces of space debris flying into the ‘moon board’ stopped the project from progressing.
* Since the 1990s there has been a growing trend of ‘brand naming babies’, and labels like Nautica, Lexus and Armani have joined the ranks of America’s top 1,000 names. There are also, apparently, at least four American boys sporting the name ESPN.

Now, I know what you are thinking, your thinking ESPN is a perfectly versatile name, and one you wish you could have thought of yourself, one day you could be calling out to your beloved Example of a Sporting Parent’s Neanderthal, and the next, you can just ‘change it up’ and go with Ever Spill Pepsi again and you’re Nailed!

(ref)
* Last year, a company was equipping billboards with tiny cameras that gather details about the gender, approximate age, and time spent looking at the billboard by passersby. The details were then transmitted to a central database with the goal of tailoring a digital display to the person standing in front of it, i.e, to show one advertisement to a middle-aged white woman, for example, and a different one to a teenage Asian boy. Unclear however, is how the company will respond to an aging cross dressing transgender person holding hands with young Asian toy boy clutching a Bichon Frise lap dog and staring at the billboard in a bleary barbiturate daze, for days.

(ref)
* Every year, companies send commercial messages into the classroom of youngsters unfortunate enough to attend schools that are partially privatised in order to ‘make ends meet’, mostly commonly in the form of sponsored educational materials.

But before you jump to any rash conclusions here, this is not just any willy-nilly branding, for the corporations are expertly matched to the subject, and could you get any better a match than McDonalds and Nabisco Mars candy sponsoring education material on nutrition? I think not. And McDonald’s don’t limit themselves to nutrition either, they also ‘teach’ about deforestation, namely how best to clear fell large chunks of the Amazon to rear beef that is nutritionally as good for you as Mars bar sandwich….

(ref)
* In 2008, Jason Niebling opened up on of the few remaining untapped advertising spaces in the world, his face.

Although tattoo advertising has been around since 2003 when American Jim Nelson sold the space on the back of his head to a web hosting service for $US7000, Niebling would be the first to bring the practice to Australia when he offered up the right half of his face for sale to the highest bidder (his left side was already taken with the ‘commercial free’ content of skulls and things).

Like many of us, his goal was to avoid, “getting up every morning and having to work for the man”, via the less common means of “working for whoever’s on my head”.

For whoever had enough money, Niebling promised that the entire right side of his face would be the “ultimate advertising space”. And by ‘ultimate’, he meant providing the company with direct expose to the local population of a little known Australian town, filled with people like this woman. A hard opportunity to pass up really, especially considering the ‘moon board’ is out.
PS – on the quest for this unintended advertising rant, this was the favourite ad I found:

Haha, well according to Dr Google, you may have to reconsider your ‘i’ve never done opiates claim’, as vicodin does indeed count! Loads of drugs derive from opiates, where would be be without the wonderful poppy plant hey?!

And you haven’t even mentioned that stupid octopus! The fact that the entire TV watching world has a)decided to throw science out the window and accept that an octopus is psychic, and b) offer him a job on wall street, is causing me tremendous anxiety at the moment. But think of the advertising potential…

The ocotpus, “Paul” as his name would ve, correctly predicted all of the games involving Germany in the World Cup this year. Look him up on google or something, “Paul the Psychic Octopus”.

You must write for a living because you drew me in to read the rest of the article right from the first line. Truly captivating piece here. Everyone loves reading about statistics, especially ones that involve them, even if it’s only by association.

My favorite one was the stat about the patents who named their children ESPN. What mother in their right mind would agree to such a horrific name?

Ah, thank you Paul for directing my (already too short) attention to something that is no doubt only going to do it further harm, but a Psychic Octopus, so fascinating, I won’t able to resist….

This was a really kind comment, thank you. I have done a little bit of writing for a living (if you could call it that) but nothing that has ever been as fun and as satisfying as doing this blog (unless you count writing about music for street press, that was immensely fun, but it worked more as a barter system than a monetary one, I wrote interviews and reviews in exchange for tix to the gigs, it was the best lifestyle ever, I only worked in paid employment two days a week but I got to see loads of international artists, and local events, that I never would have had the money to see otherwise. I highly recommend it)

There is an octopus in Germany that has been talk of the world for it predicts results of FIFA World Cup matches that Germany plays. And the predictions have been correct for 11 out of 12 times (or something like that – heck if I care…!) including the one that Germany lost and dropped out of the tournament, and it was correct!

That octopus is looked up to as demi-God… No! No!!… Invertebrate God… and people are crazily in love with the fantasy of him being able to predict everything. Some people may call it crazy… but some call it miracle… definitely not the sane ones…

I was reading today that shopaholics and hoarders are considered to have mental disorders due to their shopaholism and hoarderness. Being that i am both i began to get worried. But then luckily i remembered i was already diagnosed as batshit crazy and was being medicated for it, so felt it kind of fitting…

I guess the corporations have got to find out ways to reach the shopaholics like me who don’t watch much television but admire cross-dressers and transgender folk as beacons for the future, weird sounding lap dogs or not…

Good to see someone else taking the current environmental catastrophes with the proper serious gravity they deserve. Has been on my mind the past few days…

Not that your post wasn’t also hilarious as usual, when needing to be…

Thanks JJ, I really enjoyed your comment, but on the subject of things that can make you feel crazy, my blog got featured on WordPress thingy today and I feel like I’ve been suddenly thrust into a big crowd somewhere, getting overwhelmed by all the people about!
Thankfully, I dont have shopaholic to add to my mental equation, but I feel for you, and your credit card.

I find it amazing that advertisement hasn’t been ripped down. I see it is in the UK though and maybe there you guys have developed more of a tolerance for various views to religion than the US has… which is odd considering the main purpose for moving here was to escape religious persecution during the rise of powerful churches throughout Europe.

Hi Phillip, I actually live in Australia, and I have never seen that ad here. I called it the ‘favourite’ ad I found while searching around yesterday, but i think more accurate would be ‘interesting’, I admit that it amused me, but on further thought I found it kind of interesting the lengths people go to inflict their ideas on others, is that any better than that the ‘powerful churches’ are doing – totally off tangent, but it reminds me of motherhood, every one has such strong opinions, and I’m constantly amazed that someone people see fit to push those views onto others, who cares?! Each to their own I say…(except for the neo nazi white supremacists fascists and Co. i’d happily fuck their shit up!)

Thanks Karen, really happy to hear you checked out some other posts, I had great fun writing Songs to Live By, whereas this ‘freshly pressed’ number really did hurt my head!
I dont know that Kenny Chesney song, but thanks for the tip, Cheers from the Great Southern Land! (a ref to an Aussie song, couldnt resist…))

Thanks Catherine, I appreciate it. Its not too often I get called ‘clever’ outside the context of my mother baring her teeth and hissing “oh, you think you’re soooo clever, do you…”!!! And then she usually shows me that I’m not, but I like to think of it as ‘tough love’ (its against the law in Australia to have a ‘big head’ so she’s just looking out for me….)

I have never heard of that before, but it is a terribly sad (and mean) way to look at it. Mental health in general is perceived in an awful light by far too many people….
Thanks for the comment Fight For the Write (to party)

Ruby, we have rubbed past each other (?&^%$£”) at various other blogs… do you know you are on today’s Freshly Pressed frontpage at WP? Congrats on that and a well considered rant. When did you get the London Underground photo?

Hello Dave, yes I have indeed seen you around the traps, and it is nice to see you here also. Believe it or not, but I did know I was featured today (mainly based on the fact that my stats went from a flatline to a steep incline) but thanks for the heads up anyway!
Sorry, I thought I put the image source up with that photo, not sure what happened there, but here it is:
And I first saw it on a blog called Bivcovering

You seem to be able to synthesize a variety of fields and promote a healthy position.🙂

I wonder if you’ve heard of the Ringing Cedars Series? They are a series of 9 books written by a Russian entrepreneur about a woman who lives in the Siberian Taiga. Since she is ‘outside’ the predominant culture, she has a refreshing outlook on the way that the rest of society seems to operate. Some of these observations are outside of anything I’ve read anywhere before.

Thank you Intentional Sage, not only for the lovely comment, but for the recommendation also, it does sound like something I would enjoy to read. I appreciate that you took the time to notice where I was coming from, not that I know where that is, but I appreciate the thoughtfulness all the same!

Thank you Adventure Entrepreneur, you make some great points on your site also – like becoming a Mobile DJ as a way on gaining an income during the recession! Do you think I would have some success with that based on having a music collection comprised solely of Tuvan Throat Singing? I hope so. Just dont tell my partner though, he is a music producer and DJ and he might get nervous about me ‘cramping his style’ ( but just imagine his face when I clear fill the dancefloor with those throaty tunes)

Those stunts like giving up your face as ad space is more about the publicity of the stunt itself than the actually finished product which would be on the face of some random dude. I’m sure the at least a week or so it was high talk on eBay or wherever he was auctioning off his face! haha.

I’m glad you cleared that up Prafeston, because I was really scratching my head over what kind of exposure any company would get from the half face of a half wit in Ipswich, and what if he grew a beard? And wore a hat? Why you would barely be able to read the tag line….

Insane indeed. But, as Banksy once said, “the worst thing about Advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative young people…” which certainly seems to be true, and maybe helps explain why you, and so many great creative, enjoy studying Design Arts…?!

Thank you Tom, I love to hear of chuckling (which is a wonderful word by the way) and it has an even better (imagined) sound to know it was produced by me, intentionally, or otherwise, and I will never know which is the case here, because you might have laughed at “Example of a Sporting Parent’s Neanderthal” (an intended joke), or at McDonalds sponsoring educational materials on nutrition (a fucked up reality) – both of which I like to believe are kind of humorous….
Thanks for the visit, it would be great to have you back in the future

Thank you 70sparrows, I’m glad to hear it (although the thought of people coming back for more makes me a little, well, anxious….dont be surprised if the next post consist of a bit long slurrrrrrrrrrr after the 60 beers I drink before writing it…)

Well, I am one of the 15 million or so suffering from anxiety (even though I have learned to control it) and I have to say I have never seen any connection between it and advertising and media etc. However, it could very well be- that if you are prone to anxiety and you are CONSTANTLY bombarded with stimuli and stress and isn’t everything breaking news nowwadays… it just might be the one thing that anxiety boil over…

Yes, I know what you mean, I got a bit sidetrack with the advertising slant, it was not at all what I intended, i was more interested in the idea of ‘modern day madness’ making us mental. And while I really do believe anxiety is mostly the result of family/upbringing, general stress etc, I also absolutely believe the our ‘way of life’ has a lot to do with it too, and with our general levels of health and happiness – but advertising per se wasn’t my target, that just kind of happened. But like you say, the constant bombardment of ads and stimuli undoubtedly adds to stress levels
Thanks for the visit, and good on you for feeling in control of the anxiety, as Dr Russ Harris (my favourite mindfulness guide) likes to say, “make room for it, let it be there”!!

I would just like to say, what a pleasure it was reading this post. Too much advertising becoming evermore intrusive and targeted is something that I find is increasingly winding me up, I resent the idea of people selling things to me when I am at my most relaxed. That said, I can not pass up this opportunity to highlight http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/us_and_canada/10368899.stm this particular news story to you which made it to the UK. It appears that not only content with attempting to sell you things from the side of the road whilst in traffic they now want to consider selling you things from the car in front whilst station a at lights! This on it’s own is enough to make want to give up driving and start to walk everywhere!

Oh my God! What another tragic(ally great) example of the encroaching ad army! I’m glad you did share it with me, thanks. Though I have to say I cant see that walking is an altogether safe way of avoid it all, you might get accosted by someone in a sandwich board….

Wow, I dont think I’ve ever met anyone that actually looks forward to it before! I appreciate hearing your perspective. Its true, there are some sterling ad’s out there in terms of creative genius, too rarely though if you ask me…but the creative side is not usually the bit that bothers me…

Thanks Wounded Genius, I’m glad to hear you liked it. I’m not sure if consulting Master Google counts as ‘serious research’ though, but had I known that, then university sure would have been more of a breeze…

Woah…I see that I’ve come late to the party. I hope there’s still enough time for me to tell my “Here’s number 101 because I totally want to fuck with you OCD’ers” anxiety joke.

Actually I guess it doesn’t matter, after reading about the four “ESPN boys,” it didn’t seem all that funny anyway.

I won’t keep you, RTS, as I see from the comments that many others have finally stumbled upon the brilliance that is your blog. But just so you know, I love this post. So much, in fact, we made a pact that if neither of us are married by the time we’re forty, we’ll say Screw the people who look down on human/blog marriage! and just elope.

And I want to hear you fuck with us with yr 101 anxiety joke too, dont worry about the ESPN thing, I dont think those people were even trying to be funny so much as *original, *pity for them that 3 others were out there thinking the very same thing….

Anyway, yeah I know, some party hey, those WordPress folk really know a thing or too about renting a crowd….

I’m soooo glad I found you. Now I can blame you for the inordinate amount of time I spend NOT working today. If you feel your ears burning, it’s because it’s me telling my supervisor I am going as fast as I can but I had a lot of ‘research’ to do which was very time consuming.

Thanks for the blogs. And I love the children named ESPN. I might rename my child that.

Rubytoshoes it’s MADMEN 2010 but no Kodak carousel except for Apple’s iPhone ads. The ones that make my head hurt most are the the debt scammers, the one’s who will take your money to get you out of debt. I’ve been wondering who owns them, do you think it’s the Banks? 🙂

Oh dear, taking money to get you out of debt, sounds so very….. counter productive?!. I think my favourite example of that by the banks was when my Dad was fined this huge fee because he paid back a loan early. Nuts.

Anxiety due to advertising is perhaps a subset of anxiety due to choice. Why else do people advertise if not to influence a choice, a decision.

So, in turn this may raise questions about the role of individualism in society. That all important set of consumer choices we make that is supposed to not only secure our social status but dictate the fate of the world. Very anxiety making.

But while considering this, at a personal level, perhaps we should ask does choice actually exist? We are all products of the environment and the thousands of chemical reactions that go on in our brain. Where is this ability to choose manifested? Did we choose to go from one cell to 2 after conception? At what number of cells did we choose? Does bacteria choose? A snail? A frog? A cat? A monkey?

The soul, the me, may well be just the result of a collection of cognitive processes. A way of keeping track of ourselves temporally, physically and socially. It may have some function itself, but to say this process is non-deterministic may just not be true. There may be some evolutionary advantage to the illusion of free-will, but we did not evolve in the consumer age.

Maybe the real cause of the anxiety is importance we now place on the “I”. Maybe we should all relax and accept the deterministic nature of the universe and that our choices are not made at a conscious level if at all. In fact if we could prove determinism, wouldn’t that put advertisers out of a job?

I love it when you swear. Specifically, I love it when you rant and get all sweary. I’m a big fan of the F-word and you have some very well-placed f-bombs in this post.

More specifically, I love that you got “Freshly Pressed.” You deserve to be discovered. I love even more that the “How to Get Freshly Pressed” info states that they won’t FP sweary posts. Which is obviously bullshit. Or possibly, that it’s more of a guideline than a rule and that there’s an unwritten four or five “fuck” limit that gets randomly enforced, much like some women I used to know.

Either that or you got Freshly Pressed and then went back and inserted the obscenities to “stick it to the man,” who looks very much like a woman on the “How to Get Freshly Pressed” page.

As for the substance of the post, I think that advertisers have gone well past the tipping point. Even respected websites have noted that frequent visitors “suffer” from “ad blindness” and don’t even see the paid content. Hence the proliferation of those annoying “move your mouse to close the picture and it engulfs the page” ads.

I think that carries over into the real world as well, which only gets removed when you are given nothing else to pay attention to but the ads, like when trapped on public transportation or stuck in line somewhere.

My drive to work has several billboards but not much real advertising. If it’s not promoting our ever-expanding but grossly incompetent hospital, it’s some form of public service announcement, leading me to believe that the only people with any money in my area are either a.) grossly incompetent medical “professionals” or b.) the government.

That’s just kind of sad. I’d rather deal with pushy ads selling me something I want but don’t need rather than pushing something I need but don’t necessarily want (hospitalization, government services, speeding tickets).

I must drop F-bombs in my sleep and not even know about it because I wasn’t even conscious of swearing in this post

As for Freshly pressed, I didn’t even know it existed until Scott got featured a month or so ago, so I’m certainly not up to speed on swearing protocols, bullshit or otherwise. But I like that you are paying attention CLT. Thats a good thing. Keep your eyes peeled, all day, every day, even if it means they get engulfed by annoying pop up ads advertising failingly dismal public services

Anyway, thanks CLT for the lovely compliment, and for the cracking laugh at you getting the flick after four or five fucks from ‘some women you know’.

PS – I’m not sure if it is getting ‘discovered’ so much as feeling like you own a shop that suddenly gets flooded with people that come in on ‘sale’ day, browse around, and then leave (not to sound ungrateful for the exposure, or to any genuine readers that came by, but I just got the sense that FP brings a few (hundred) superficial shoppers whose main purpose seems to be making you really appreciate your regular customers….)

I know everyone has probably heard this kinda shit before but my fav advertising technique is how companies get us to pay THEM so we can be walking billboards for them. That’s shear genius, say I while wearing my T-shirt with it’s giant American Eagle log on the front…. Sigh….

At first i thought you were talking about people that wear those sandwich boards, then it twigged you were referring to how we buy all that branded crap and parade around in it….But I know what you mean now, I avoid branded clothing, they can do their advertising, as they have so undoubtedly proved, without my two cents worth…

Ah Ruby, you are so worthy of freshly pressed, though I must admit I didn’t think they had such good taste. I love this post and have also been snickering away at your replies. I most relate to the horrid experience of finding a sticker in your mouth when biting into an apple. For God sake, do they really need to label it? Regarding the billboards that film you, didn’t I see something like that in a Tom Cruise movie? And finally, YES, how ABOUT that whirlpool of rubbish the size of NT? That’s just going too far! Thank you for brightening my day once again. And now I know why I couldn’t get your page to load a couple of days ago🙂.

Thanks Kirsty, I think you brightened my day more with this comment of yours! I love that I can count on you to be just as confounded by the madness of it all, even if I do try and just sound like a smart ass, you know that I find it all utterly fucking nuts, as do you. Thank you my dear

To the case in point, my mothers side of our family is completely unhinged…alcoholics, suicides, and even murder, so I come by my depression and panic attacks honestly. But compared to them, I am a paragon of mental stability.

As for advertising, I belong to the late Bill Hicks’ school of thought, where he said, “If your involved in Sales or Marketing, do us all a favor and kill yourself now.”

Thank you Mr FJ. I have to say I can completely understand your point re unhinged families, I too come from a long line of drink and madness (although not quite murder) which helps for keeping my own madness in perspective, its all relative – haha.

Love the Bill Hicks quote, and all I can say is thank the Lord Bschooled didn’t manage to finish her marketing degree or you might be recommending all sorts of unethical and untimely endings….